Today’s verse moves the reader away from the scenes of Messiah’s trial before men to His death on the cross. In reading the words of the above text, we almost must remind ourselves that it is prophecy; the predictive power of its descriptions and declarations are so accurate, it is as though we are reading these scenes directly from the Gospels themselves.

Isaiah sees the Christ being hurried along from arrest and sham trial to the place of execution: He was “taken from prison and from judgment.” And then we read, “who shall declare His generation?” This refers, humanly speaking, to His premature death. This can be seen in the phrase which follows: “For He was cut off from the land of the living.” Christ would be “cut off”; this is a well-known term describing His death, as can be seen also in Daniel 9:26. The “land of the living” is our present life in this world (Ps. 142:5); Messiah would be cut off from it. We are given the reason for this shocking turn of events: “for the transgressions of My people He was stricken.” It was not for His sins, for He was the sinless One, but for the sins of His people. Blessed Lord!

Centuries after Isaiah, a man from Ethiopia, a high ranking eunuch, was visiting Jerusalem to worship at the temple (Acts 8:26–39). He was a proselyte of Judaism, but as a foreigner and a eunuch, he was an outsider. He was reading Isaiah 53:7–8 while riding in his chariot when an evangelist came alongside him and, “beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to Him.” The outsider was one of the “My people” for whom Messiah was cut off and stricken. He “went on his way rejoicing.”